Visible Measures Gets $21.5 Million to Double Down on Digital Video

Funds Come Via Current Investor DAG Ventures and Advance Publications

Visible Measures, the digital-video analytics and ad-network company, has raised $21.5 million in a new round of funding led by current investor DAG Ventures. Several other existing investors, including Advance Publications, the owner of Conde Nast, contributed to the round. The company, which partners with Ad Age on a weekly Viral Video Chart, has now raised more than $65 million to date.

Brian Shin

The most recent funding values the company around $200 million, according to a source close to the deal. CEO Brian Shin said Visible Measures still has money in the bank from a $13 million round it closed in September, but added that the new funding gives the company the chance to accelerate hiring, more aggressively launch new products and manage the huge data costs associated with the business.

Founded in 2005, Visible Measures initially focused on providing analytics on video content and video ads to publishers and advertisers. Last year, however, the company introduced an ad network of sorts that helps advertisers distribute so-called "branded video content" and video ads to publishers' websites. Advertisers pay Visible Measures when a user clicks on one of these pieces of branded video; Visible Measures then shares the revenue with publishers.

Among the new products Visible Measures will soon unveil is what Mr. Shin called "our equivalent of AdSense," Google's contextual advertising product for publishers.

"We are not talking about a couple of extra percentage points of efficiency for publishers," he said. "It's actually 100% new incremental revenue. .. that helps publishers make more money while keeping the user experience as ad-free as possible."

Mr. Shin said his company currently has a little more than 100 employees and should hit about 140 by year's end.